Professor: Epidemic of Campus Sexual Assault at UMich… Has Been Shrinking For a Decade

Over at the American Enterprise Institute’s blog,
AEI scholar and professor of economics Mark Perry crunches the
numbers on instances of sexual assault at the main University of
Michigan campus (Perry teaches at the sister campus in Flint).

His determination? Sexual assault at U-M has declined notably
and in line with national statistics, casting doubt on the left’s
characterization of the problem as an “epidemic.”
From the blog: 

There’s been a lot of attention paid recently to the issue of
“campus sexual assaults” and some of the media including
the Washington
Post and MSNBC have
referred to it as an “epidemic.” Doesn’t the term “epidemic”
suggest that there is a widespread and growing number of campus
sexual assaults? If so, the crime data from at least one major
college campus — the University of Michigan — don’t support the
term “epidemic” and in fact suggest the exact opposite – a
declining trend in sexual assaults, both on and off campus, and for
assaults reported to both police and university offices.

The chart above shows the annual number of sexual assaults at
the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor from their annual crimes
reports, like this most
recent one. It should be noted that the UM crime reports
include sexual assaults that took place: a) on-campus, b) off
campus (including out of state) and c) on public property. Further,
it includes sexual assaults reported to: a) the University of
Michigan Campus Police Department, b) other police departments and
c) non-police organizations like the UM Sexual Assault Prevention
and Awareness Center. Therefore, it’s a pretty comprehensive report
that covers off-campus sexual
assaults andassaults not reported to campus
police, but to another police department or to a university
office or official – in contrast to some universities that 
apparently only report sexual assaults on
campus and only to the campus police.

As the chart above shows, the number of “campus” sexual assaults
at UM has been trending downward for the last decade, and in 2012
(most recent year available) the number of sexual assaults (34) was
about half the numbers in 2004 (64), 2005 (65) and 2006 (65).

Perry is keenly aware that U-M is just one school—maybe sexual
assault has declined in Ann Arbor, but nowhere else. However, the
survey most commonly cited by those who insist that sexual assault
is a rising epidemic was conducted at just two campuses, he
notes:

I realize that this is just one campus, and I’ll research others
as time allows (there is no central database for campus crime
reports, each year’s report has to be accessed individually), but
how could that trend at UM possibly be described as an “epidemic of
sexual assaults on college campuses.” Also, it could be noted that
the “1-in-5 women are sexually assaulted while in college” was
based on a survey of students at only two universities, and
extrapolated to the entire country.

Sexual assault is notoriously underreported, and it’s certainly
not wrong for universities to work toward an even greater reduction
of rape. But the trend in the data suggests people should be
optimistic that improvement is possible—because
it’s already happening—rather than pessimistic that things are
getting worse.

Hat tip: The
College Fix